A Kiwi Fortean.
I have very little biographical information on Guy Powell, so little it comes close to violating my rule that I only write about Forteans whom I have researched. But there’s enough, and he’s an interesting character, so I will bend the rule a bit. (Not for the last time.) What I do know comes from some biographical blurbs tagged to articles he published in academic journals and a few brief comments in a letter that he wrote to both Tiffany Thayer and Eric Frank Russell.
Guy Powell was born 5 November 1921 (Guy Fawkes’ Day, he noted) in New Zealand, to a family that traced its roots back to Yorkshire. In the 1940s and 1950s he lived in Dunedin. This may have also been the same Guy Powell who appeared in Te Karere, the publication of New Zealand’s Mormon community, giving the report on the Dunedin Branch in 1947. During his early to mid-twenties, Powell devised a linguistic theory that rewrote Polynesian history, and circulated it among scholars. He taught at Maori schools from 1950-1952. These were the institutional descendants of missionary schools, with the aim of Europeanizing the population; there had been a change in policy during the 1940s, the goal now preservation of Maori culture, but Powell thought the change had not taken effect.
Powell was associated with the Journal of the Polynesian Society as early as March 1950. In September, he published a paper in that journal titled “Notes on a Maori Whale Ivory Pendant.” This piece was very short, only a brief description and drawing of the object, with a description of its provence. By 1953, according to the Journal of Austronesian Studies, Powell had enrolled in the Department of Anthropology at Auckland University. In March of the year, he published another article on The Journal of the Polynesian Society, this one trotting out his own theories about the linguistic development of Melanesian languages. These were ideas he’d been playing with for years, but now had time to write them up.
I have very little biographical information on Guy Powell, so little it comes close to violating my rule that I only write about Forteans whom I have researched. But there’s enough, and he’s an interesting character, so I will bend the rule a bit. (Not for the last time.) What I do know comes from some biographical blurbs tagged to articles he published in academic journals and a few brief comments in a letter that he wrote to both Tiffany Thayer and Eric Frank Russell.
Guy Powell was born 5 November 1921 (Guy Fawkes’ Day, he noted) in New Zealand, to a family that traced its roots back to Yorkshire. In the 1940s and 1950s he lived in Dunedin. This may have also been the same Guy Powell who appeared in Te Karere, the publication of New Zealand’s Mormon community, giving the report on the Dunedin Branch in 1947. During his early to mid-twenties, Powell devised a linguistic theory that rewrote Polynesian history, and circulated it among scholars. He taught at Maori schools from 1950-1952. These were the institutional descendants of missionary schools, with the aim of Europeanizing the population; there had been a change in policy during the 1940s, the goal now preservation of Maori culture, but Powell thought the change had not taken effect.
Powell was associated with the Journal of the Polynesian Society as early as March 1950. In September, he published a paper in that journal titled “Notes on a Maori Whale Ivory Pendant.” This piece was very short, only a brief description and drawing of the object, with a description of its provence. By 1953, according to the Journal of Austronesian Studies, Powell had enrolled in the Department of Anthropology at Auckland University. In March of the year, he published another article on The Journal of the Polynesian Society, this one trotting out his own theories about the linguistic development of Melanesian languages. These were ideas he’d been playing with for years, but now had time to write them up.